GLASSJAW · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Siberian Kiss

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 48, 56 and 59-73, and 10 more places -- 30.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
178 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
162
LENGTH
3:38
DIFFICULTY
53/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 178 BPM
SIBERIAN KISS · BAR 59

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 10 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 53 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 134 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 of them. Nothing is a matter of opinion: each rung has a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next one.

  1. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 134, 156 and 178 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Siberian Kiss use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 178 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 30.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 48, 56, 59-73 and 84, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Siberian Kiss hard?

10 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 53 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 162 BARS ANALYSED